Jia Zhang of FiveThirtyEight built censusAmericans, a Twitter bot that provides hourly biographies of people across the country. The bot collects information that people provided to the US Census Bureau between 2009 and 2013. Each person’s data is stored in a line of code, which censusAmericans translates into personal details — marriages, jobs, health insurance status, citizenship.

We’ve published some excerpts from the project that reveal the circumstances of ordinary people in the United States: veterans working ninety-hour weeks, new parents without health insurance, and noncitizen workers struggling to find employment.

I usually work 72hrs per week. I am looking for work. I only worked around 3 months last year. I don’t have health insurance.